[plug] OT(?):Single Partition most secure - others wear out disks (beginner student question)

[Andrew Francis]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001 daniel at iinet.net.au wrote:

> Hi Plug,
> Single Partition most secure -others wear out disks according to my 
> lecturer and the text - I disagree & some support would be great(and 
> references to quote), or to be put right.
> 
> They say:
> "Single Partition, single-NOS.  A single-partition, single NOS 
> configuration is a drive that has a single primary partition that is 
> completely reserved for the NOS.  This is the most secure configuration" 
> ..... Text "MCSE - A Guide to Networking Essentials" c1998 by Ed Tittel & 
> David Johnson (current text for this year's new course) p 238.

Maybe on Windows, but on a Unix system having multiple partitions gives
you the option of mounting as readonly the partitions that only contain
readonly data ... which would make it a lot harder for an intruder to
replace a file with a malicious substitute.

Of course, if an intruder has root they could unmount/remount devices etc,
however odds are this would cause a fair amount of consternation, leading
to things being notices by the admin.

> My Central TAFE lecturer Geraldine agrees and says she has spoken with Doug 
> (TAFE hardware expert) who also agrees and goes further to say that:
> ~extra partitioning forces smaller cluster sizes and thus more reads and 
> writes to disk to extract the same amount of data - causing disk thrashing 
> and (eventual early) disk wear with consequent less data safety through 
> physical integrity - this is general, broad and not O/S specific~.

Only if you read one cluster at a time, which is such a retarded idea that
I don't think it's been done since the days of CP/M. If you have a block
of data, having it stored in 20 x 512byte clusters isn't really any worse
than having it stored in 5 x 2kilobyte clusters.

Smaller cluster sizes do, of course, worsen the theoretical worst case
scenario regarding fragmentation. But then, if you're *that* fragmented
you're doing something wrong, regardless.

On the other hand, smaller cluster sizes tend to waste less space. And if
your MCSE-book-happy lecturer disagrees, keep in mind that Microsoft like
their small cluster sizes as well - smaller clusters are the basic
difference between FAT32 and the older FAT variants (which was originally
designed for SMALL harddrives in the MSDOS v2.00 days - it wouldn't work
on partitions larger than 32 megs. And when DOS 4.00 came around, they
hacked FAT around to allow for larger clusters).

Regards

--
Andrew Francis
locust at iinet.net.au